About

Backend engineer at Nexon Korea, working on matchmaking. Interested in Go, distributed systems, and the stubborn problem of matching people both fairly and fast.

chaewonkong@gmail.com · github · linkedin

Experience

Nexon Korea — Backend Engineer

July 2022 – Present

Matchmaker v2 — Greenfield Development (18 months, ongoing)

• Architected a standalone matchmaking service from scratch, enabling external game studios to integrate independently without engineering support
• Designed a reusable queue configuration schema and matching algorithms to support diverse requirements across multiple titles
• Transformed a monolithic internal service into a distributable Helm-based solution with a premium managed tier, positioning the product for external sales

Matchmaker — Observability Platform

• Led the database migration from PostgreSQL/Timescale to ClickHouse, achieving a 5–17x query performance improvement after a PoC and TCO analysis
• Built a self-service analytics API, eliminating game teams’ dependency on data analysts
• Optimized PostgreSQL queries by ~10x before the strategic migration decision

Backfill Simulation — Accelerated Testing Engine

• Developed an accelerated log replay simulation for backfill testing, reducing validation time from 60 minutes to 100 seconds (36x)
• Enabled rapid iteration on backfill policies for filling vacant slots in ongoing matches within 60-second windows
• Deployed to The First Descendant: 12.6% wait time reduction, 50.77% full match increase

Earlier

• Frontend Engineer, Banksalad (2020–2022)
• Co-Founder, Oh Good Project (2020–2022)

Skills

Go PostgreSQL Redis ClickHouse Kubernetes Docker LGTM Stack